


The Strange World

by MercuriallyApathetic



Category: RWBY
Genre: But is Anything Like it Seems?, Existentialism, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parental Abuse, Shipping Tags to be Added, actually existentialism says it should be, how weird can i make these tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:22:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5580079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuriallyApathetic/pseuds/MercuriallyApathetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into the mind of the head of the Schnee Dust Company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strange World

**Author's Note:**

> Weiss and Winter think their father a tyrant. But fathers are humans too. And humans are complex little buggers.

The CEO of the Schnee Dust Company is possibly a man.

 

He is not the first man. There have been many men. In fact, many, if not all, will agree that among the first of humanity was indeed, a man, and roughly half of all humanity that has followed have also been men. Then there are the Faunus, whom are also likely men, barring genitalia that falls well out of the standard deviation of the form and usage of mammalian bits that necessitates the definition of a new system of biological genders and all its associated roles in culture, society, and psychology.

  
Indeed, the anthropic principle and assumedly human-like reproduction practices ensure there is guaranteed to be at least one man in each existing species to have existed at some point in time. And his resemblance to a man and lack of evidence against it would suggest that he is, most likely but not absolutely definitively, a man.

The CEO of the company doesn't go on tangents like that anymore. He used to. He no longer wonders about hypotheticals such as the impact of sneeze-induced teleportation in exchange for a million units of currency.

  
He used to, back when it was bad. Back when he felt loss and fading profit margins and something that resembled fear but would never be acknowledged as such.

  
The possibly a man looks at a picture. They're two young ladies he helped create. Family. Family is a socio-cultural norm of Remnant. He understands there are contracts within this norm. He is to shelter and provide for them, and they are to continue his work. In fact it isn't actually his work. It is the work of those that came before him.

  
Were he as he were before, he would wonder. What is in a name? What is it about the time through which a name is passed that gives it weight? He recently had hundreds fired as new machinery and labor practices made them obsolete. Does diminishing the names of others give weight, then?

  
The name and the company survived the great war that ended at Vytal. It survived the outbreak at Menagerie. It survived a CCT collapse whose death toll during the radio blackout has yet to be determined, all these years later. It survived the economic collapse that the possible man had used to consolidate the company's power. Did survival give a name weight? Does bearing scars truly make one stronger for it?

  
Millions are affected by the company. It employs tens of thousands, through itself and subsidiaries and satellites and other corporate jargon the possible man throws around when he deems it necessary. Supposedly, the Schnee Dust Company is not a corporate juggernaut of magic powder. It is not a monolith holding monopoly in many regions. It is not heavily intertwined with the military of Atlas. Is a name weighty from being held up by so many names under it?

If said weight were to exist, it is indeed a heavy weight. He would think. Ponder. He no longer does, but back then. Back when nothing made sense.

 

  
A long time ago he was hurt because of trouble. When he came into his role, when this entity made not of bone and blood but hours and goods and profits was trusted into his hands.

  
Trusted into his hands. Like his daughters. Yes, that's the word. It flickers in his mind, vainly making flashes and pleas into the emptiness. Tugs of things like presence and loneliness and regret that he understands but does not register.

  
He doesn't really think about the hurt. He doesn't understand why his daughters can't see his point of view. He provided for them. He gave them all the material requirements beings of flesh require. He was impressed upon that this generally leads to a response in affection from their children.

  
Secretly, back then, he wished his daughters were proud of him. Proud of how he'd taken the company to new heights, learned how to push past the restrictions placed on him by society. That was something he'd read once, in a rare book from before the war. He hasn't touched it since, but he keeps it in a bookcase in a wing of the house; few remained after the mass book burnings, and fewer still after the transition to scrolls. The depth of the destruction of knowledge itself that the place known as Dublin as written by the man named Joyce may as well have ceased to exist.

  
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. The author has been lost, but not their words. Why should the likely man be guaranteed that what he is doing is right? And if the individual cannot be guaranteed, how can society be guaranteed to be something whose definition continues to be argued across countless coffee houses and houses of learning to this day?

  
Thus the likely man understands that he cannot listen to society. By hidden messages and discreet conversations and suppression of compromising knowledge, by circumventing the intent of society, the Schnee Dust Company will continue to rise towards its potential, no matter what the likely man at the helm may have felt back then that he does not remember now.

 

This he does think upon now; both his daughters are Huntresses. They are strong; he knows this because they carry the name Schnee, and they will not let down the family name. But should the fate of many befall them, if both are taken by the Grimm, then what will happen to the company?

  
He understands that the company is a repository of sorts; names come and go, the assumed man of humanity dies to Grimm, knowledge and culture can be forcibly removed. The company is the family's legacy, a way to record all those that have come before.

  
He doesn't remember how he felt before. Was he nervous? Was he frightened? Did he ever think about becoming a Hunter? Having bunk beds? He doesn't remember if he had friends. Did he need friends? Did he learn how to distinguish friends from associates, and both from means to an end?

  
He is carrying the weight of the name and the weight of the existence of the being of hours and goods and profits that is reliant on his guidance. Now, there can be no room for self-doubt, no room for introspection and personal needs that he no longer feels. He gave his daughters all they required to do as they do now, serving to protect their world. He gave and must continue to give his company all that he may do to reach its full potential— any less is to disappoint and shame those that came before him, to belittle the work that others have done to pave the way.

  
That is what his daughters have yet to learn; their lives are not purely their own. They have a duty to carry on the family name. They have a duty to the company that their predecessors created.

  
He should've stopped them, before. When both wanted to be Huntresses. He should've made one of them stop, come onto the steps of inheritance and the finer points of corporate management and ensure that, for another generation, another grain in the sands of time, their name and works will carry on.

  
He doesn't remember why he didn't. To him, the company has greater importance than his daughters. Than him. If the company makes enemies, then he and his daughters also make enemies; there are no boundaries of separation in family. He doesn't understand why his daughters don't understand. If he remembered, he would understand that his daughters learned emotional self-sufficiency. They were more emotionally sated if given free reign than under his, and he let them go.

  
The likely man, were he back then and not now, would wonder about a certain set of hypotheticals. Why was it best that he let them go? The likely man is a most likely near perfect parent. He couldn't possibly have made any mistakes, and, if by the same uncertainty of absolutes that prevents him from absolutely certainly being a man, he did make mistakes, he couldn't possibly sit in the parlor, day after day, head in his hands, struggling to understand how to fix them.

  
And he certainly wouldn't have seen them off with anything less than swelling pride, not painfully aware of how fundamentally not flawed a parent he has been to them.

 

Now, he understands but does not register emotion. Something new. An innovation that he understands helps him make decisions, save time, keep him calm.

  
Now, there is no hurt. There is no doubt, no fear, no existential despair. No hatred for the insurgents that disrupt his business, no irrational sadness or longing over his daughters.

  
The CEO of Schnee Dust Company is possibly a man.

**Author's Note:**

> This was born of another, previously unrelated idea. There will be more. This will tie into a greater conspiracy. True believers cannot be stopped, nor will they understand why anyone would want to stop them from saving the world.
> 
> Also, shipping. Hypothetically, anyone can be shipped with anyone. Anyone or anything. Nothing, not even the concept of non-existence, is safe from the mighty shipping goggles.


End file.
